There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of water splattering on Emma's skin and cascading down into the drain; there might've also been some soft humming, but I couldn't tell through the door. Outside, the storm's fury had abated, and it was merely a heavy downpour; the muted drumming on the roof played a duet with the shower.

Then Tammy started looking around the room. "Hey, can you help me?" she asked. "I need something to prop this stupid tail up with. It was dragging all the way here, and it's gonna be a major pain in the ass if I have to keep it raised off the floor myself the whole time."

I nodded, glad to turn the conversation to anything else. "Uh, sure. Anything specific?"

She shook her head. "Anything long enough to lie across the footrests and chunky enough to support some weight. I think I have some smaller plastic bins in the other closet."

She continued looking while I opened up the closet. To my mild surprise, the first thing I found inside was a bass guitar, leaning against stacks of other stuff. I wouldn't have taken her for a musical type, and there weren't any band posters on the wall or anything; but then, I'd only known her for a couple months. "Uh, hey," I asked, "where should I put this?"

She looked a bit surprised herself. "Oh. Uh, just lay that on the bed there."

I did, and turned back to the closet. It was filled with bins of miscellany - old notebooks, assorted personal items, and medical supplies that I didn't immediately recognize - which were all too large for the purpose. After some digging, I found one of those cylindrical metal tins that you get bulk popcorn assortments in. It was about half the usual size, which seemed just right for a footrest - tail-rest? - to me.

"Hey," I said, turning to her, "what about this?"

She gave it a look. "S'pose that's about the right size," she said. "Dunno how it'll hold up, though."

"You could pack it with sand or something," I said. "I mean, not now, but depending on how long this all goes on..." I frowned, trying not think about what the future might hold for any of us. "Um, we should see how it fits first, though. Don't want you getting spinal issues trying to protect your fin."

Tammy stared at me. "That happens? Not gonna lie here, I have no idea how any of this" - she gestured at her tail - "works. I thought it was, y'know, basically just my legs, now."

I gave her a curious look. "And you're in the therapeutic side of the metamorphic studies program?"

She shrugged. "With an eye towards targeting changes directly and never having this be relevant in the first place, yeah."

I shook my head. "Huh. So...basically you can think of the tail as an extension of your spine and ribcage. It's got nothing to do with your legs - those fins under your, um, under your skirt...are what map to those for mermaids."

"Huh," she said, thinking about it. "Okay, that...explains a bit. It definitely didn't feel right, trying to move that way. Hell, I didn't even know these dumb things were part of the package." She tapped one of the ridges in her skirt that outlined a pectoral fin for emphasis.

I knelt down and tried to lift her tail; it was heavier than it looked. She got the hint and raised it up for me. "It's a common misconception," I said. "It's like the caudal fin - the one down at the end here. For aeons, art and popular culture had it oriented the other way. It's how you'd think a person playing at being a mermaid might look - with the knees together and the feet splayed out. It wasn't until merfolk were actually around for a while that that myth got busted in the popular consciousness."

Tammy stared at me in surprise. "You've really studied this stuff."

I gave her a sheepish look; I might've blushed, if I still could. "I, um...I read a lot. Here, like this," I said, helping her situate her tail with part of it behind the barrel, so that the weight pushed it up against the front guards on the footrests. "How does that feel? No discomfort? No cramping?"

She shifted around a bit, trying to get a feel for it. "I don't think so. Honestly, though, I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling."

I shrugged. "Like I said, it's part of your spine now. A lot more flexible than the human parts, but still, if it's kinked too hard for too long, you can get cramps or strain in the muscles, or even actual spinal injury. This'll work for now, but if you are stuck like this for a while, you'll want a professional opinion - and we definitely need some duct tape to hold this in place. There's specialty outlets that cater to merfolk; they'll probably have better ideas."

She gave me another funny look. "Jesus, Stu, what are you doing in theoretical physics and not P.T.?"

"I...I don't know," I said, being completely honest. Why was I in any program, any place, doing any thing, and not another? I couldn't tell her any more than I could tell me.

Tammy shook her head slowly and started to say something, but didn't; then there was a long, awkward silence. Finally, I nodded over to the bass. I was more into listening to music than making it, but I recognized the look of the thing and the logo on the headstock - it was a Fender Precision, though I didn't know any more than that. "You, uh, you play?" I asked.

She shrugged. "A little; not all that well. And I've been way too busy ever since senior year in high school."

"Huh," I said. "Uh, cool." I thought about asking more, but then Emma stepped out of the bathroom, still undressed.

Okay, she was wrapped in a towel. (She also had her hair put up in a smaller towel.) But she was having trouble carrying her head in her hands while keeping her arms in to hold the towel in place; she kept just skirting around one wardrobe malfunction or another. I tried to focus on something else, and ended up on how I'd never seen her without her glasses before. It might've been a good look, if it weren't for the power-squint she had to do to see anything; at least she looked good in specs.

"God, that's better," she sighed. "Um, hate to ask this, but do you have anything I can borrow for the night? I don't think I can sneak past my roommate; she's always up way late."

Tammy shrugged. "Sure, knock yourself out; I dunno what I can even wear over...scales, anyway. I guess I'm stuck with pajama tops from now-uh, for the time being." She glanced awkwardly in my direction as she spoke.

"Great, thanks," Emma said, glancing through the closet before helping herself to a silky nightgown. I wondered whether Tammy wore it much; what if she had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? How did that work with...? I stopped myself there; that was a little too weird, no matter the circumstances. It was one thing to consider what disabled people have to deal with in the abstract, and another to imagine a classmate's personal toilet process in detail.

Emma went back into the bathroom. She gave a little yelp; from her experiment earlier, I figured that was when she slipped the gown over her absent neck. I wondered if it was the "smoke" itself or just the neck area that was sensitive; either way, she'd probably be wearing a lot more button-up shirts in the future.

She reemerged dressed in the nightgown, with her head in one hand - not secure under her shoulder like before, but held in the crook of her arm, slightly in front of her. This didn't seem too safe to me, but her other arm was full of toiletries - brush, comb, hair dryer, hand mirror. She dumped these onto the dresser, which had a small mirror on top, then took her head in both hands and set it up there as well.

Standing behind herself, she unwrapped her hair, gently toweled it off, then plugged in the hair dryer and set to work, humming softly to herself, as if she were both stylist and client. It was kind of fascinating, in a surreal way. Tammy and I watched her for a while, just for the novelty.

"Well, guess I'll get a shower in, too," Tammy said after a minute or so. "Anything I should know?"

I thought about it. "Not much you're, uh, not already used to. Just mind how hard you bend your tail, and be gentle scrubbing the scales. They don't come off easy, but you do want to be careful with them." I noticed her worried expression. "Uh, from what I hear, you'll know if you're hurting them," I added hastily.

She smiled in relief. "Right, thanks," she said. "Em, you need anything more from the bathroom?"

Emma, busy with her hair, didn't actually pick up her head and shake it this time; she just gave a dismissive little wave over her shoulder. "Nope, should be all good here for now. Huh," she muttered, "I'm gonna have to keep it shorter..."

Tammy went into the bathroom and shut the door. I could hear the shower stall open; there was a slithering sound, a thud on the floor, and a heavy clunk as the handles on her chair slammed into the door. I cringed. "Um, you okay in there?" I called, cringing again at the strange, metallic musicality of my new voice, shimmering like a screen-door spring.

"I'm fine," she replied. "Just screwed up the dismount. This stupid tail is slipperier than it looks." I heard the shower door shut, and a moment later the water started running.

For a couple minutes, the only sounds were Emma's soft humming and the shower running...and the constant chatter of my new inner workings. Finally, Emma spoke up from atop the dresser. "Are they actually slippery?" she asked. "Like, slimy? She looked pretty normal to me."

I shook my head. "Not slimy, no. I mean, they need to keep moistened somewhat, but there's no goo or anything. But they are pretty smooth, and her chair just has like a nylon hammock thing for a seat." I remembered that much from being a total klutz earlier; I'd felt the heavy-duty nylon weave on my forehead, but all the resistance came from the part of Tammy that was pressed into the other side of it.

"Huh," said Emma, putting the finishing touches on her hair. She held the hand mirror behind her to get a look at the back, then turned her head this way and that, checking out the sides. "You know a lot about this stuff, apparently."

I shrugged. "I read a lot."

She chuckled. "Uh-huh, sure. There's nothing wrong with being interested in it, y'know. Heck, you're in the metamorphic studies program for a reason, aren't you?"

I shook my head. "Um, not...not really."

That got an outright laugh. "Stu, you're a terrible liar. Kinda shocked nobody's told you before."

I really didn't know what to say. Did everybody have some kind of insight into myself that I didn't have? "I, uh...look, it's complicated." It wasn't, but I was in no mood to talk about this right now. Or...ever, really.

Emma picked herself up off the dresser. "That's not the vibe I'm getting, but sure, whatever you say. For serious, though, there's nothing wrong with it; hell, it's even relevant for us now."

"Yeah, well right now I'm wishing pretty hard that it wasn't."

She gave me a sad smile, walked over, and pulled me into a half-hug, cradling her head in her other arm. Tactile sensation in this body was more detailed than I expected, but less than I was used to; I could feel the pressure of her touch fine, but not so much the texture of her skin. Her breasts squashed against mine, and I realized that my new feminine assets were just molded into the hollow shell of my torso, with the same fabric "skin" as the rest of me - more like a mannequin than a living creature. I wasn't even a person, I was a thing, an object...

It was too much. The whole thing was a crazy fever-dream nightmare made real, but this last realization - the thought of my self as an empty shell, nothing inside but a machine - tipped me over the edge. I would be sick to my stomach, but I had no stomach; I wanted to cry, but there were no tear ducts for my glass eyes. My internal tempo was climbing, and I started to shake. Things were getting off-kilter inside me again, and I felt my neck twitching slightly.

Emma couldn't see my face from down at rib-level, but she still noticed these strange new stress symptoms, and hugged me tighter. "Aww, Stuart," she said in a motherly tone, patting my back with a muted, hollow thump. "This is all pretty crazy, but hang in there, okay? We've had a hell of a day, and we're all exhausted and confused and don't know what happens next. Trust me, tomorrow...well, it'll still be weird and confusing tomorrow, but we'll feel a whole lot more able to handle it after a good night's sleep."

I relaxed a bit, taking in the comfort of her embrace; then I got confused thinking about that. Part of me welcomed the distraction, and part of me was genuinely curious. "...Wait, can I sleep?" For all I did know about metamorphic studies and the many types of transformees that'd been catalogued over the years, I'd never heard of anything like what I'd become. (Or what Emma had, though I vaguely recalled something like that in folklore.) I had no clue how my new body worked, besides the obvious.

She thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Don't see why not. Pretty much everything more complex than an ant has some kind of sleep cycle. Even animals that could function 24/7 on a metabolic level shut down some part of their brain to process information or whatever. I'd be shocked if there were a sentient humanoid that didn't need to sleep."

I was trying to process the idea when we were interrupted by a yell from the bathroom. "STU!" Tammy called out, loud enough to make sure that there was no way we wouldn't hear. "HOW THE HELL DO I USE THE TOILET LIKE THIS!?"

It took me a moment to process that. "Uh," I stammered softly, "it's-"

"IT'S KINDA URGENT!"

"It's that vent partway down the tail!" I called back. "On the front!"

There was a soft wet slithering buried under the hum of the bathroom fan, and I tuned out the rest for privacy's sake. Emma was smirking. "See?" she said, shrugging and cocking her head to one side. "That was genuinely helpful to someone, and all because you know more about this stuff than you let on."

I suppressed a groan. She was trying to be supportive; it was just one of those times where people think they see something in you - say, you play the harmonica for your great-aunt as a child - and they blow it out of proportion and for the next ten years you're getting new harmonicas for your birthday. It wasn't like working with transformees was some sort of childhood dream or anything; I just retained information well, the more useless the better, and...read a lot. I'd spent plenty of evenings on Wikipedia binges, even before I'd started college and really got in the habit of curling up in bed with music and my phone as a form of stress management, and if I happened to read about this stuff, well, what of it?

After a bit, Tammy exited the bathroom. "Ugh," she said. "I feel like I should be wearing, like, an ankle-length skirt. Or...wherever the ankles would be on this dumb thing, I guess."

In reality, she was only wrapped in a towel, which covered from her bust to her waist; she hadn't been able to wrap it around the pelvic fins (which sat where her hips used to be,) so it hung loose at the bottom and didn't cover much. I looked away out of politeness, even though mermaids' private parts were normally hidden between a pair of scales, like snakes.

Emma grinned at me. "Okay, Professor, where would they be?"

I gave her a dour look, feeling self-conscious about it now, but Tammy seemed curious as well, under her irritation. "Well," I said, "they really wouldn't be, they just don't exist. I guess the closest thing other than the caudal fin would be the anal fi-"

I stopped short, but not short enough; Tammy's face fell. "Thanks, I needed that comparison."

"Sorry," I said sheepishly. My ticking dropped slightly in tempo and intensity.

She waved it off. "It's not your fault. It's just this whole situation...oy."

"If it helps," I offered, "A. it's just a fin located around that area, B. you don't have one, and C. nobody really pays this stuff any mind for mermaids. They call it the 'Donald Duck principle' - unless we're used to thinking of something as gross or obscene, we generally don't think about it at all."

Tammy stared at me, her fins thrashing in mild agitation. "Donald Duck...?"

"He walks around with no pants on all the time," Emma explained.

She frowned. "Well yeah, he's a cartoon character."

"Yeah," I said, "but so is Popeye, and they make him wear pants."

"That..." She trailed off, just staring at us for a moment. "That's just weird, honestly. People actually spend time thinking about this stuff?"

I shrugged. "Not usually, and that's the point - whether or not it makes any sense to think of it one way or another, people are already used to not thinking about it, so there's no point in worrying about it beyond what makes you, personally, comfortable. Like, there's some centaurs who wear one of those medieval-style horse-dropcloth things because they feel exposed without it, but nobody else notices."

She sighed. "I dunno how much it helps, but thanks, I guess." She took the hair dryer off the dresser and went over to the full-length mirror, plugging it into a power strip on the nearby end-table and starting in on her long golden tresses. I wondered why she didn't use the mirror on the dresser, but I glanced back and realized that it was too high for her. How many other daily annoyances did she have to deal with...?

"Well," Emma said, surveying me, "I guess it'd be your turn, but I don't know if showering is a good idea for...whatever's going on inside you now. And you're not really sweating or anything now, anyway."

I had to concur. Getting the mechanisms inside me wet wasn't going to help any, and the fabric "skin" covering the shell of my torso might be water-resistant, but not waterproof. Plus, I wasn't exactly eager to see myself naked right now. "Yeah, probably not," I said.

"Come think," she mused, "are you gonna need any help using the bathroom?"

I cringed. "I, uh, p-probably not...?" I wished she hadn't said it, and tried hard not to think about it. It didn't work.

"Yeah, that wouldn't make sense," she said. "Wait, do you even have-"

"Emma!" Tammy snapped, shooting her a Look. "Just chill, alright? Stu's got enough to deal with right now."

"Oh, uh, yeah," she said, dipping her head forward in apology. "...Sorry."

I nodded, but said nothing - mostly because I was trying to think about anything else, but I was getting a little frazzled with her carefree attitude, as well. But she was right about one thing - the sooner we all got to bed, the better.

After a few minutes Tammy finished brushing out her hair, and put it up into a bun. I wondered why; maybe it helped keep it from getting all tangled up when she slept. Did she roll around a lot? I glanced over to her bed to see if there was anything breakable within tail-range, but the only fragile-looking items were on the nightstand.

"Well," Emma said, "think I'm gonna turn in. Stu, I guess you get the other bed. Might as well try to sleep, if you can; we all need it." She went into the other room, threw back the covers on a bed, set her head on the pillow, and laid down, pulling the comforter over herself. After a moment, she took her head and brought it down to her chest instead, cradling herself in her own bosom. A minute later, she was out like a light.

Tammy looked over at me. "So, uh...you gonna be okay?"

I sighed. "I...don't know. I guess there's nothing I can do about it right now, and she's right: if I can sleep like this, I definitely need it."

She nodded. "Yeah - we're all pretty drained, one way or another. I don't know how any of this is gonna play out, but hopefully it'll feel a bit less overwhelming in the morning." She wheeled over to the bed, then turned back to me. "But...if you need anything, let us know, okay? We're all in this together."

I nodded, smiling in spite of myself. "Thanks. Um, good night."

"G'night," she replied. She turned off the overhead light, lifted herself into bed, and switched off the lamp on the nightstand.

I left her room, shutting the bathroom door behind me, and glanced over at the toilet. I really didn't want to think about it, and I hurried into the other room and shut the door. I was surprised to find that I still needed a moment to adjust from light to darkness, but I'd seen the shutters that replaced my irises; however my vision worked now, it seemed to be closely modeled on the human eye. But I could see well enough, and I walked over to the bed as quietly as I could and sat down, slipping off my flats and stockings.

I noted with surprise that I still had a sense of smell, and wished that Tammy's roommate didn't use such an aggressively chemical floral perfume. But I was emotionally drained even if I wasn't physically exhausted, and all I really wanted was to lie down and just stop thinking. I laid on my stomach and pulled up the covers, wrapping them around the shaft of my winding key to cover my upper back; it didn't work very well. Then I lay there waiting for sleep to happen.

It didn't. I didn't feel drowsy as such, I was just lying face-down on a mattress trying not to think about things. My internals were still chattering away, almost covering up Emma's soft snores. Would I have to wait for my mainspring to wind down? Wouldn't I just stop, then? Even sleep took energy; would I start back up tomorrow morning when Tammy or Emma wound me up, just as stressed-out and confused and terrified as I was now?

That just got me thinking about having to have someone wind me up. Obviously I couldn't do it myself; I couldn't reach back there and still have the leverage, and you can't add energy to a system using only the energy already in that system. As long as I was like this, I'd need someone there to take care of me when I wound down. What would that be like? Would it hurt? Would it feel good? Or just a satisfying relief, like going to the bathroom? I had no idea, and it felt awkward even thinking about it, though I couldn't say why.

I lay there for ages, trying to stop thinking; but thoughts I'd pushed out earlier kept creeping back into my brain. Damn it, I couldn't get Emma's question out of my head, or the feeling of my sculpted metal bust against her flesh-and-blood breasts. What even was I? Was I a woman, or just a mannequin shaped like one? Or was the question even correct? I'd never heard of a change like mine, but there were other subjects who'd become robots of one type or another - did they identify as male or female? It wasn't something I'd read much about. And now, after everything Tammy and Emma had said, here I was with it suddenly entirely relevant to my own life and I didn't even know what I had, let alone what it made me...

I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't want to know, but I had to - and this was too damned many layers of clothing to sleep in, anyway...! I got up, went into the bathroom, and examined the dress I was wearing in the mirror; it was buttoned down the back, around the shaft of my key. Hesitantly, I reached back, fumbled a bit with the buttons, and unfastened them all the way down. I took the dress off and set it aside; one layer down, more to go.

The...the under-layer dress beneath the dress, whatever that's called...was next, and I slipped that off; it only had one large button fastening it at the waistline. Last was a smaller, thinner under-dress-shirt thing that was definitely underwear, but wasn't a bra as I understood the term; it was open from the key-shaft down. I removed this, and caught a glimpse in the mirror; nervously, I turned to it and looked myself over.

Sure enough, my "bust" was clearly a sculpted form on my torso. But the "breasts" were rendered much more clearly than on a mannequin; they weren't large, and they could only have so much definition without being truly separate, but the lines were all there, and my "skin" folded into the crease at the underside to just hint at hanging off of the chest like the real thing. But there were no nipples, just a blank expanse of flesh-toned felt. More real than the plainly artificial things it resembled, but also undeniably artificial…

Seeing my new face on this body was strange, too; it was one thing to see a girl's face staring back at me from the mirror by itself, but there was something about seeing her - my - body as a whole, "skin" flowing into "skin" where clothing had hidden it, bared to myself, that really drove it home: this strange doll-thing was me now. Changed so utterly, different from what I knew on every level...

I glanced down; it was the first time I'd ever seen breasts - my breasts - from this point of view. I glimpsed the last remaining barrier, a pair of plain white panties covering whatever become of my familiar bits. I was scared to take them off, to know for sure, but I had to. Nervously, I slipped my thumbs under the waistband and pulled them down, letting them drop to the floor.

And, inevitably, I got my answer. The area between my legs was smooth, unbroken "skin" - but like the chest, not merely a mannequin or Barbie-doll artistic hand-wave. There was a clearly-defined mound there, with a crease in the fabric suggesting a cleft, but nothing more. I cupped it gingerly. I could feel sensation there; I yanked my hand away before I could determine what kind.

This was it? I had all the information, but the answer was still unclear. I was more of a woman than a doll, but more of a doll than a woman...? I couldn't make any sense of it. I felt like I should be upset, but I honestly didn't know what I wanted the answer to be. I was confused, mentally exhausted, emotionally drained. Even physically, I could feel my mechanisms slowing, hear the tempo of the ticking drop - my mainspring beginning to wind down for real. I couldn't handle this; I needed sleep.

In a daze, I went back to the bed, leaving my clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor. I laid down on my side, my winding key hanging out over the edge of the mattress, with just enough clearance to turn freely and not scrape the bed-frame. I pulled the covers over my head, and curled up into a fetal position underneath. Exhausted, I willed myself to go to sleep - and immediately, sleep took me.